Memoirs of the Verney Family Compiled from the Letters and Illustrated by the Portraits at Clayton House. Four Volumes Complete: Memoirs of the Verney Family During the Civil War; Memoirs of the Verney Family During the Commonwealth 1650 to 1660; Memoirs of the Verney Family from the Restoration to the Revolution 1660 to 1696

London: Longmans, Green, and Co, 1899. First edition. Pebbled brown cloth with red and gilt edge bands. Gilt titles and coat of arms. Top edge gilt. A very good or better set with wear to the extremities.. xxv, 362 pp. + Adv. [24]; xv, [1], 454 pp., + Adv. [2]; xi, 493 pp.; xiv, 510 pp. Illustrated with 69 engravings, drawings, and woodcuts + 2 foldouts. Royal 8vo. Inscribed by Margaret Verney (sister of Florence Nightingale) on the half title of Volume III, the first of the two volumes which she wrote. Volumes I and II were written by Frances Parthenope Verney. "The Letters and Papers of the Verney Family down to the end of the year 1639 were first printed in 1833. Here, the tale was taken up by pious hands and carried on through three series of Memoirs of the Verney Family during the civil war, during the commonwealth and from the restoration to the year 1696. The story, like the stately and hospitable English house which forms its centre, is full of portraits; but, in their book, the tact of the editresses has allowed these to be mainly self-painted. The Verneys, before and during the seventeenth century, were, in the words of the elder lady Verney, an ordinary gentleman's family of the higher class, mixing a good deal in the politics of their times, with considerable country and local influence; Members of Parliament, sheriffs, magistrates, soldiers—never place-men—marrying in their own degree, with no splendid talents or positions to boast of, no crimes, either noble or ignoble, to make them notorious, and, for that very reason, good average specimens of hundreds of men or women of their age. They were, at the same time, a family that cherished, in prosperity and in adversity alike, the principles of conduct in both public and private life to the observation of which the greatness and the freedom of England are deeply indebted; and, in their case, the principles in question were practised not less constantly by the women than by the men." The Cambridge History of English and American Literature. (Inventory #: 16616)